During laboratory and field experiments on Nacella concinna on the west coast of Admiralty Bay, King George Island (Antarctica) clear morphological and behavioural differences between two limpet forms (N. concinna polaris and N. concinna concinna) were found. They suggested presence of genetic divergence. AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism) profiling of N. concinna individuals representing the two forms revealed nearly 32% of polymorphic bands; only 2% of them differed between the forms. Our results suggest that the observed phenotypic variation seems to be a result of adaptation to environ− mental conditions and not of any genetic divergence.

Early blight disease caused by Alternaria sp. is one of the most devastating diseases of

Solanaceous crops widely distributed in Sudan. The aim of this study was to determine the

genetic variation among different Alternaria isolates recovered from different Solanaceae

crops showing typical symptoms of early blight disease. Infected leaves of tomato, potato,

eggplant and pepper were collected from different geographical zones in Sudan. The recovered

fungal isolates were identified to the genus level based on cultural and morphological

characteristics. Five representative isolates were sent to the CABI Bioscience, U.K. for confirmation.

The genetic relationship among the isolates was determined using the amplified

fragments length polymorphism (AFLP) technique and the generated data were used to

create similarity matrices using the PAST 3.01 software package. Dendrograms were constructed

based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficients. A total of 70 fungal isolates was recovered

from the tested plants and all of them showed morphological characteristics typical

of Alternaria spp. The conidia appeared in multiple-branched chains with spore sizes in

the range of 2.38−13.09 μm × 12.30−43.63 μm. Therefore, the isolates were identified as

Alternaria alternata (Fr.) Keissl. The identification was then confirmed by CABI.AFLPbased

dendrogram which revealed five clusters with a significant cophenetic correlation

coefficient (r = 0.834) between the dendrogram and the original similarity matrix irrespective

of their geographical origins. Eighteen (75%) of the Alternaria isolated from tomato

leaves were clustered together in cluster I and five isolates formed two separate clusters,

viz. cluster IV (T-Kh5 and T-H1) and cluster V (T-H4 and T-Med2). The remaining isolate,

T-Am5, grouped with one of the potato isolates in cluster III. The other isolates which were

recovered from potato, pepper and eggplants were all separated from the tomato isolates

in the largest cluster.

Poa annua L. is the only non−native vascular plant that was successfully established in the maritime Antarctic. This project aimed to determine the amount of genetic and epigenetic variation within and between two populations of P. annua , one from South Shetland Is. (Antarctic) and the other one from Central Europe. We applied two AFLP marker systems, using endonucleases that recognised the same restriction site but differed in their sensitivity towards methylation. The Antarctic population differed from the Polish one both at the genetic and epigenetic levels. Genetic variability in the Antarctic population was lower than in the Polish one. Some loci in the Antarctic population showed signs of selection. The difference between Polish and Antarctic populations might be due to a weak bottleneck effect followed by population expansion. Using only epigenetic markers, the Ant − arctic population exhibited increased variation level compared to the Polish one. These may have resulted from plastic responses to environmental factors and could be associated with survival in extreme conditions.